Rockin' in the free world with Neil Young's PonoPlayer

TG Daily Staff, 13th March 2014

The Neil Young-backed portable media player has a pre-order price tag of $300 (ultimately jumping to $399) and an October shipping date.

Key features include a digital filter with minimal phase, zero-feedback circuitry, a high quality DAC chip, headphone jack, line output, 64GB of built-in storage, a 64GB microSD card slot and support for 24-bit, 192 kHz audio.

"While you can listen to MP3, AAC, WAV, AIFF, or ALAC files on the PonoPlayer, one of the key things that sets it apart is support for FLAC audio files," Linder explained. "The Free Lossless Audio Codec is designed to offer high quality audio without the data compression involved in creating MP3 files."

Customers will also be able to purchase DRM-free music from the PonoMusic web store, with albums tentatively prices at $15-$25. As expected, the device plays existing albums and tracks, as it supports a wide range of DRM-free formats.